He earned his doctor of medicine degree from the University of Liverpool in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. He served in Africa with the Royal Army Medical Corps. He completed his medical studies at University of Oxford in Oxford Oxfordshire, England. He became a professor of neurosurgery at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York in the early 1960s. He returned to England to become a professor at London Hospital in the early 1970s.